Welcome to the fourth of the chronicles that we will dedicate day after day to the 69th edition of the Seminci – Valladolid International Film Week, the second that a server will cover for El Séptimo Arte. 'half of Ana' – Marta Nieto, unlike Paz Vega of 'Rita', he doesn't beat around the bush. He knows what he wants to tell and how he wants to tell it: From his own perspective; possibly as a person, not so much as a filmmaker. Sometimes both things coincide, other times they don't. And Nieto seems to make the film for herself, not so much for the viewer. And again, sometimes both things coincide, other times they don't. In this case we are talking about a 50/50, being a simple, delicate and honest film that, however, struggles to convey emotion. Its conciliatory, moderate and pacifying tone means that the film never rushes or explodes in any way. Hence, for example, Nieto does not know how to finish it off. The conflict ends up being practically nonexistent, with a treatment that is too soft and light to feel that any of its characters are facing something relevant from the viewer's perspective, which should always count. Because films always have to be made for others, and not just for oneself so that in addition to appreciating them we can also feel them as our own (or failing that, adopted). ******
'Bob Trevino Likes It' – Tracie Laymon, its writer and director, defines it as a film about choosing family and finding it in unexpected places. The filmmaker pours her personal experience into the character of Lily Trevino, a twenty-year-old woman abandoned by a shitty father and a life without expectations who establishes a friendship with a man with the same name as him. It is “a film based on true events” that, roughly speaking, could be backed by Searchlight Pictures. At least that's how it behaves for most of its footage, although it ends up finding its own voice during a final third that is surprising for the effectiveness with which it is planned and at the same time works. This is what ultimately defines it as an apparently discreet and unremarkable film that, however, leaving aside possible formulas, feels authentic and honest. Hence, in the end one has no choice but to surrender (with pleasure) to it. ******* 'Christmas Eve in Miller's Point' – So quickly they came to my mind 'SOS! It's already Christmas and 'American Graffiti'in a cross between the two that has neither the grace and effectiveness of the first nor the elegance and refinement of the second. In fact, it's difficult to think that Tyler Taormina's third film is a comedy. He seems to be, or rather, he often behaves as if he were. But, no matter how much – it seems – he tries, grace does not appear even at Christmas. And if it doesn't work as a comedy, as a drama it lacks insight, wit or bad temper. In this way, what best defines this nostalgic rereading of one of the classic genres of American cinema, Christmas movies, is that it is an insipid and bland film. There is nothing in particular that attracts attention, nor anything capable of encouraging an inertia that becomes routine. And when it ends, 30 minutes before it seems to last, you are certain that you would not have missed anything of this party if you had stayed home. ****'Eephus' – The debut feature of Carson Lund – also director of photography of 'Christmas Eve in Miller's Point'…- has become my second favorite baseball movie after 'They hit'. Its plot is as simple, frank and direct as its development is: two teams from the New England non-professional league meet for the last time on an old baseball field about to be demolished to build a high school. That's the entire movie, from when they arrive early… until they leave at night. There is no more and no less, in an ensemble film set in the 90s that reminds us of the intergenerational and popular dimension of sport understood as a collective social experience where the important thing is not to win. Well, yes… but at the same time no. Lund creates a “non-sports” film that is as natural as it is transparent, twilight and melancholic with which any adult of a certain age can identify. That is, one of those humble, simple and everyday films that, although they do not seem like much, shine, precisely, for that same appearance of not being one while they speak to us, with utmost carefree clairvoyance, of those shared moments of our insignificant existences that do not They are nothing, and at the same time, they are everything. *******
